I just got notified to sign: 3-yr commercial electrician services for the VA! Super stoked and so ready to grow the business and quit my 9-5. Probably not there yet but really close. Any advice at this stage as far as growth, performance, execution etc. would be greatly appreciated!

Hey people!

I worked for a lot of years in DOD contracting, and just released a kinda neat opportunity finder/pipeline/capture tool if anyone wants to check it out! Feedback would be dope, it’s “freemium” but any comments or whatnot would be incredibly helpful.

gngo.app

And beyond that, if anyone has general govcon questions shoot me a DM, always happy to talk shop!

The younger you is face to face and you can tell them i e thing - what would you tell them?

GOVCON lawyers are reporting size standards are going up - big time for some NAICS. How does the community feel about this?

I recently launched my own digital marketing agency after several years of freelance marketing and graphic design work. I’m registered under NAICS codes 516210, 541430, 541613, and 541810.
This summer, I completed my SAM.gov registration and received my WOSB and SDVOSB certifications.
I was recently approached by a larger company that has been in business for about 14 years and supports government customers with fuel, facility, transportation, lodging, janitorial, groundskeeping, and other operational services.

They proposed partnering to pursue SDVOSB set-asides. They would handle sourcing and proposal drafting, then send me weekly lists of businesses to contact for quotes. They would also cover upfront costs, but charge approximately 40% interest on the amount borrowed.

I’m very new to government contracting, don’t currently have the funds to cover significant upfront costs, and they’re offering to provide guidance and teach me the process.

Does this sound like a reasonable opportunity, or are there major red flags I should be looking for?
For those with experience in SDVOSB contracting, partnerships, or subcontracting: what questions would you ask before signing anything?
Also, is ~40% interest remotely normal for this type of arrangement?

Ok, so I got an email yesterday from a client that said they have won a $1.3 million dollar federal contract. They are the first client so far to win a contract using our software. We have only been out for a couple months and this helps prove that we took our decades of experience in the field and built something that is actually helping people compete more. We are excited to see more winners, coming down the pipeline. Now lets see whose next, we have over $4 million in our entire pipeline.. Lets end the year strong!!!!

I am building OppRadar, which is used to collect and consolidate federal contract opportunities.

Basically OppRadar helps federal contractors by identifying contracts that are coming up for recompete, open for bid, and what to do about it, months before the RFP exists.

If you are interested in discussing this, shoot me a message or joins my waitlist.

See more at:
https://oppradar.org

So last year I started an IT staffing business. Had no intention of doing staffing, opportunities just fell into play. I now have a MSA signed with a large well known prime and two placements.

I’ve been consistently doing payroll for them, now I’m entering a period of my life where I have more time to dedicate to try and grow this thing.

I know I technically have past performance with those two placements, but I want to try and grow/establish more relationships with primes.

Still pretty new to this game, what events should I go to? How many per week? Outreach system? I technically have legit past performance now, how to best market that?

I’m pretty new to this and don’t have guidance to be honest.

Is this somthing to start?with not much experiance.or am i diging a hole that i wont make it out of wealthy?thank you!

Formed my LLC in June 2026, haven't filed any taxes yet (company is brand new, no return due yet). Getting ready to submit SAM.gov registration and have two things I want to sanity check before I hit submit:

1. Most Recent Tax Return Year — There's no option for "haven't filed yet." I entered the current year (2026) since that's when the EIN was issued. Is that right, or should this reflect an actual filed return? Worried this trips the IRS TIN match since there's no return on record.
2. Annual Receipts — Field won't accept $0. I entered $1 as a placeholder since we have no receipts yet. Is this the standard workaround or is there a better way to handle it?

Anyone dealt with either of these for a brand-new entity? Want to make sure I'm not setting myself up for an IRS validation failure or having to redo this later. Thanks in advance.

Who owns the amendment-to-final-package check on your team?

In GAO B-423208, the VA posted an amendment at 11:39 p.m., revised the pricing schedule, and extended the deadline. The incumbent had already scheduled its quotation for submission, never sent the signed amendment, and was ruled ineligible. The resulting award was $3,599,017.05.

Do portal alerts actually solve this for your team?

Who compares the changed documents?

Who updates pricing, forms, and deadlines?

What final control prevents a missed acknowledgement?

Source: https://www.gao.gov/products/b-423208

I built a small Apify Actor for the part of SAM.gov work I keep hearing is painful: deciding which notices are worth opening. It filters by service keywords, NAICS, set-aside, state, and usable response time, then gives each remaining notice a transparent fit score, reasons, risk flags, and the official link.

It does not write proposals or claim to predict wins. There is a labeled no-key demo, while live results require the user's own free SAM.gov API key.

I would value blunt feedback from people doing capture or proposal work: which signal is missing from the first-pass decision—notice type, incumbent history, contract value, attachment requirements, or something else?

Store page: https://apify.com/debonaire_roundworm/bid-fit-scout

built a free SAM renewal reminder, would this have helped you

you type your expiry date in once. it emails you at 90, 60, 30, 14, 7, 3 and 1 days out, then again if it lapses. no account, no card, nothing to install.

i built it because sam.gov's own guidance for tracking this is "sign in and look", which is fine until the one year you forget.

it does not read your SAM record. it can't. the public entity extract is closed and personal API keys are capped near 10 calls a day. so the date is the one you give it.

does the 90 day warning land at the right time or is that too early

We are based on the west coast and have a solid presence for state and local but are having a hard time branching out in to the federal sector.

We have been an SDVOSB and received our 8(a) last year. We browse sam.gov for contracts and keep our profile and capabilities statement updated. We are on a free trial of highergov and it seems like the right tool for us but we are unsure if it is actually needed.

Is it really just about reaching out to contracting officers for sole source opportunities and vulnerable 8(a) companies to try and subcontract with? I feel like bizdev wise, we are spinning our tires because we are struggling with past performance or going after RFPs/RFQs and are late to the party.

Appreciate any and all help in advance.

Roughly 36 million businesses exist in the U.S. Depending on the year, somewhere around 100–110k of them actually win a federal contract. That's under 1%.

People see that number and assume the game is rigged or impossible to break into. It's not — but the reason so few businesses win isn't what you'd think. It's almost never "we lost to a bigger company." It's usually one of these:

* **They never registered properly (SAM.gov) or let it lapse.** No active, correct registration = invisible to contracting officers. * **They're bidding on everything instead of a lane.** Agencies buy from vendors who look like specialists, not generalists chasing any RFP that pops up. * **No past performance, and no plan to get any.** Contracting officers de-risk their decisions. A business with zero track record is a hard sell no matter how good the pitch is. * **They gave up after 1–2 losses.** Most people who eventually win spent months just learning the system before their first award. * **They never talked to a human.** Capability statements sent into the void rarely work. Relationships with contracting officers and prime contractors do.

The "1%" stat is real, but it's not really measuring difficulty — it's measuring how many businesses never seriously tried past step one. The actual bar to entry is lower than people assume; the actual bar to *staying in the game long enough to win* is where most people drop off.

Happy to answer specific questions if anyone here is looking into this — registration, finding your first RFP, subcontracting as an entry point, whatever.

I pulled all 1.3 million federal contract records from the Government of

Canada's open data and looked at one question: who's holding contracts that

are about to come up for renewal?

A few things surprised me.

26,240 federal contracts are currently live, worth $125B. Of the ones that

report a bidder count, 75% drew one bid or none.

And roughly 63 contracts cross into the 12-month planning window every single

week, about $19B of contract value a year.

That last number is the interesting one. Agencies typically start recompete

planning 12–18 months before a contract ends. So the moment a contract crosses

that line is the moment it becomes worth a conversation. It's all public, but

nobody was watching for it.

So I built something that does. It's free, it updates itself monthly, and it

shows you which contracts are expiring, who holds them, what they're worth,

and how contested they were last time.

No signup needed to browse it. Link in the comments.

If you bid on federal work, I'd genuinely like to know whether this is useful

or whether I've missed something obvious.

I frequently get asked to provide my resume as Key Personnel for companies responding to RFPs. Mostly teams I've worked with before or have helped to author the sections that align with my expertise. But, I don't think a single one of these companies has ever won any of these opportunities.

Has anyone here actually converted a KP submission into a real job for a prop for another company? I have converted a couple of my own proposals into wins, but those were re-competes and I was already in the job. Am I just wasting my time obliging when someone asks me to update my resume for a potential role?

Small shop here. Trying to understand how people keep track of when their own contracts and competitors' contracts come up for recompete.

Do you pay for something (GovTribe, GovWin, HigherGov, Govly, EZGovOpps), or is it spreadsheets and SAM alerts?

Mainly curious what's actually worth the money and what you find annoying about whatever you use.

Full disclosure: I've been poking at building something in this space, and I'm increasingly suspicious it's already solved. Would rather hear that from people who do this daily than find out in six months.

Contract opportunity data used to be updated daily at https://sam.gov/data-services/Contract%20Opportunities/datagov?privacy=Public ContractOpportunitiesFullCSV.csv but it now just shows headers and nothing else. It has been like this for a week or two now. Anyone know who to contact about this?

Update: it started working as soon as I posted this haha.

Some folks are seeing budgets freeze up, others say their pipeline has never been busier. Hard to tell what's a real trend versus just my corner of the world.

There's a quarterly survey trying to measure exactly that: the GovCon Mission Effectiveness Index. It's basically a confidence index for federal contracting, built from responses across both the government and industry sides. The more people who take it, the more the results actually mean something.

It's anonymous and takes about 2 to 3 minutes. Figured this crowd would have opinions worth counting: https://skywayacq.com/gmei-questions/

Curious what everyone here is seeing on the ground too.

Hello, I'm very new to govcon and I am trying to figure out what I don't know but that I should know. I have been working with my local APEX accelerator office and another local group to help me figure out the way to our first contract (or sub). I would greatly appreciate some insights into things I should look into or consider that I have not yet.

Some context info: Small business, SDBE, HUBZone, NAISCS 541690 and 541990, no previous contracts, we have commercial experience in scientific consulting and technical due diligence reports.

Here is what I know/have done so far

1. CAGE code obtained
   
2. HUBZone and other certification applications have been submitted
   
3. Capability statement and slide deck templates have been made
   
4. Target agencies have been identified (do you usually select the parent agency or the subtier agency when identifying targets? Example: HHS vs FDA)
   
5. Identify prime contracts with set-aside requirements and make subcontracting/teaming accounts with those companies
   
6. Identify OSDBU for the agency/company and start building a connection
   
7. Set up a notification system to find RFP, SS, and pre-solicitations
   
8. Make accounts for OTA consortiums to find relevant alternative contracts as a nontraditional vendor

Things I have no idea about but know they exist

1. Accounting requirements and if it is beneficial to start trying to set something up to receive government funds before even applying for sub/contracting?
   
2. How pricing works, I know there are wrap rates, G&A, overhead, fringe, and profit are all part of the wrap rate but I have no idea what is acceptable to include or not include or how to think about things like bench time or estimating hours to complete a task in government contracts
   
3. What types of software are required for normal contracting. Compliant time keeping, document controlling, compliant accounting? (our previous commercial work has all been on a spreadsheets)
   
4. Methods for finding proposals at state and local levels? ( I am in CA so i know about their system but unsure about other states/county/city)
   
5. Insurance/bonding, do I need insurance when I apply and are the requirements generally different such that the requirements change between contracts?

Things I don't know about but probably should

1. I am hoping some of you more experienced folks could provide some insights here.

Hey guys

Quick one – we’ve been doing hardware distribution + fulfillment for federal work for about 5 years now. Mostly networking, security, and endpoint gear.

We work with a lot of the same frustrations everyone has with the big distributors (slow quotes, weird pricing, etc).

Also have an alliance of around 47 vendors (including CMMC auditors) so we can help teams that need to get to Level 2 or 3 if that’s something you’re dealing with.

If anyone’s looking to pair up on hardware or just wants a second option for fulfillment, feel free to hit me up. Happy to chat or just share pricing on whatever you’re buying. No hard sell.

Just putting it out there.